Beirut
A Study of Losses
POMPEII
Zach Condon has released plenty of surprising left turns throughout his discography as Beirut so far, but A Study of Losses is wholly unexpected. The 18-track epic was commissioned by the Swedish circus Kompani Giraff for an acrobatic stage show of the same name. As a romantic and impressionistic interpretation of An Inventory of Losses, a book by German author Judith Schalansky, A Study of Losses winds through 11 songs with Condon’s distinct baritone vocals inspired by the post-WWII French chanson singers (the record also follows roughly five years of recovery for Condon’s persistent throat issues). The seven additional extended instrumental themes are titled after the lunar seas and inspired by the haunting story of a man obsessed with cataloging humanity's lost treasures like a modern Noah loading up the Ark.
A Study of Losses sees Condon writing about melancholy and the creeping entropy of everything on Earth—extinct and mythical animals, devastated natural habitats, lost architectural and art treasures—alongside aging and disappearing memories. Condon grabs a harpsichord and enlists choirs and string quartets to give these visions of loss some Renaissance and chamber-music heft. The ornate electronic compositions on the album also tap into his perennial favorite record for inspiration, The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs.
A Study is Condon’s most exploratory album since the Balkan indie-folk days of 2011’s The Riptide without achieving the absolute free-falling grandeur of the 2007 classic The Flying Club Cup. More recent projects like 2015’s Gallipoli, 2019’s No No No, and 2023’s Hadsel continually shrank his scope down to indie-folk and synthesized smaller-scaled pop, which felt like a retreat to the comfort of the project’s early days, when the bedroom ruled over the theater tours. It builds off the underrated Hadsel and luxuriates in its instrumental sprawl and melodic acuity even more.
Some of the most affecting moments on A Study of Losses occur in its loping back half, starting with the ukulele and horns highlight, “The Tuanaki Atoll.” The waltzing single explores a South Pacific paradise that mysteriously vanished under the ocean as the result of an earthquake in the 1840s. The embellished song speaks of the Tuanaki people as so peaceful that they had no words in their language for war or murder. Condon’s composition is equally idyllic and swaying, like a boat lost at sea. Elsewhere, the spare and haunting acoustic folk of “Mare Serenitatis” and “Mare Humorum” are tracks with all mood and no lyrics, before the scant intros gallop into a string ensemble. “Ghost Train” is one of Condon’s typical Magnetic Fields–like synthesizer tracks, but built inside the production atmosphere of a church.
“Mare Tranquillitatis” ends the album while staring at the Sea of Tranquility. It’s the portrait of a man still seeking the divine in nature and art and finding some fragments of hope even when everything slips through his fingers like grains of sand: “Wait out your trouble / I’ll make space for / I will wait for / Heaven above.” A Study of Losses summarizes the beauty of entropy and lost treasures with the utmost care. Human existence is a finite endeavor, and Zach Condon is one of its many tormented catalogers.
